Pause, Traveler

Coupled

85 Coupled Our courtship through letters, late in life, could never have prepared us for the variability of opinions, the arc of silence in a day, the many ways to disagree without words during a long and rainy autumn afternoon. A flock of pine siskins loops through the front yard, around the corner of the house, and, for reasons inexplicable, swerves into the living room’s big window. Their bodies like gravel flung against the pane. The smell of your sleep winds its way into my dreams, we are on a boat and the water’s rough, but you hold the wheel in one hand and a compass in the other. The chart flutters in my arms, trying to catch the gusting wind. Small dark birds rustle in the grass at the foot of the house, a convulsion of feathers, tiny voices like chips of a glass bell. At one bright rush, they are again aloft, a synchronous movement, a marriage of meaning. This page intentionally left blank. This page intentionally left blank. ...